October 5th, 2023

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Theory: Owen Jones’ The Grammar of Ornament

Grammar of Ornament

Today, we began digitizing a 1910 printing of the first comprehensive book on design, Owen Jones’s "The Grammar of Ornament". Originally published in 1856, this book is one of the holy grails of art reference books. In 112 oversize chromolithographic plates, Jones collects representative samples of ornamental design from all over the world. It’s a veritable enyclopedia of pattern, contrasts and color harmony, with an almost mathematical perfection of form. The copy we are digitizing from is missing 20 plates, but the ones that remain are stunning. This book has been reprinted over the years, but none of the reissues match the original printings for image quality. Unfortunately, vintage copies of this book complete and in good condition sell for thousands of dollars, so we are very lucky to be able to bring this to you.

Grammar of Ornament

A lot of my posts here are very specific, and are aimed directly at learning about animation. But sometimes it’s a good idea to take a step back and get a broader perspective. Although this book may not specifically teach you how to draw Donald Duck or inbetween a scene, it does apply to your creative process as an artist. Along with expressing emotion, the creation of pleasing patterns is at the root of all forms of art; not just animation, but music, architecture, and dance as well. Recognizing the links between different creative disciplines can help you become a stronger artist. This post is very long, but I hope you’ll stick with it to the end where I explain how this century old book can inform your own work.

Grammar of Ornament

FROM THE PREFACE

In the following chapters I have endeavoured to establish these main facts-

First. That whenever any style of ornament commands universal admiration, it will always be found to be in accordance with the laws which regulate the distribution of form in nature.

Secondly. That however varied the manifestations in accordance with these laws, the leading ideas on which they are based are very few.

Thirdly. That the modifications and developments which have taken place from one style to another have been caused by a sudden thowing off of some fixed trammel, which set thought free for a time, till the new idea, like the old, became again fixed, to give birth in its turn to fresh inventions.

Lastly. I have endeavoured to show, in the twentieth chapter, that the future progress of Ornamental Art may be best secured by engrafting on the experience of the past the knowledge we may obtain by a return to Nature for fresh inspiration. To attempt to build up theories of art, or to form a style, independently of the past, would be an act of supreme folly. It would be at once to reject the experiences and accumulated knowledge of thousands of years. On the contrary, we should regard as our inheritance all the successful labours of the past, not blindly following them, but employing them simply as guides to find the true path. –Owen Jones

ORNAMENT OF SAVAGE TRIBES

Grammar of Ornament

From the universal testimony of travellers it would appear, that there is scarcely a people, in however early a stage of civilization, with whom the desire for ornament is not a strong instinct. The desire is absent in none, and it grows and increases with all in the ratio of their progress in civilisation. Man appears everywhere impressed with the beauties of Nature which surround him, and seeks to imitate to the extent of his power the works of the creator.

Man’s earliest ambition is to create. To this feeling must be ascribed the tattooing of the human face and body, resorted to by the savage to increase the expression by which he seeks to strike terror on his enemies or rivals, or to create what appears to him a new beauty. As we advance higher, from the decoration of the rude hut or wigwam to the sublime works of a Phidias and Praxiteles, the same feeling is everywhere apparent: the highest ambition is still to create, to stamp on this earth the impress of an individual mind.

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EGYPTIAN ORNAMENT

Grammar of Ornament

The Architecture of Egypt has this peculiarity over all other styles, that the more ancient the monument, the more perfect is the art. Monuments erected two thousand years before the Christian era are formed from the ruins of still more ancient and more perfect buildings. We are thus carried back to a period too remote from our own time to enable us to discover any trace of its origin; and whilst we can trace in direct succession from this great parent, we must believe the architecture of Egypt to be a pure original style, which arose with civilisation in Central Africa, passed through countless ages, to the culminatiing point of perfection and the state of decline in which we see it.

The lotus and papyrus, growing on the banks of the river, symbolising the food for the body and mind; the feathers of rare birds, which were carried before the king as emblems of sovereignty; the palm-branch, with the twisted cord made from its stems; these are the few types which form the basis of that immense variety of ornament with which the Egyptians decorated the temples of their gods, the palaces of their kings, the covering of their persons, their articles of luxury or of more modest daily use, from the wooden spoon which fed them to the boat which carried their similarly adorned embalmed bodies across the Nile to their last home in the valley of the dead.

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We may imagine it the custom of the Egyptians in early times to decorate the wooden posts of their primitive temples with their native flowers tied round them; and this custom, when their art took a more permanent character, became solidified in ther monuments of stone. The lotus and papyrus form the type of fifteen of the capitals we have selected for illustration; yet how ingeniously varied, and what a lesson do they teach us!

Grammar of Ornament
Grammar of Ornament

Egyptian ornament which is simply decorative, or which appears so to our eyes, but which doubtless has its own laws and reasons for its application, although they are not apparent to us. Plates VIII, IX, X, XI are devoted to this class of ornament, and are from paintings on tombs, dresses, utensils and sarcophagi. They are all distinguished by graceful symmetry and perfect distribution. The variety that can be produced by the few simple types we have referred to is remarkable. On Plate IX are patterns of ceilings, and apear to be reproductions of woven patterns. Side by side with the conventional rendering of actual things, the first attempts of any people to produce works of ornament take this direction.

The formation of patterns by the equal division of similar lines, as by weaving, would give to a rising people the first notions of symmetry, arrangement, disposition, and the distribution of masses. The Egyptians, in their decoration of large surfaces, never appear to have gone beyond a geometrical arrangement. Flowing lines are very rare, comparitively, and never the motive of the composition, though the germ of even this mode of decoration, the volute form, exists in their rope ornament.

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We venture, therefore, to claim for the Egyptian style, that though the oldest, it is, in all that is requisite to constitute a true style of art, the most perfect. The language in which it reveals itself to us may seem foreign, peculiar, formal and rigid; but the ideas and the teachings it conveys to us are of the soundest. As we proceed with other styles, we shall see that they approach perfection only so far as they followed, in common with the Egyptians, the true principles to be observed in every flower that grows.

Grammar of OrnamentGrammar of OrnamentGENERAL PRINCIPLES IN THE ARRANGEMENT OF FORM AND COLOR IN ARCHITECTURE AND THE DECORATIVE ARTS, WHICH ARE ADVOCATED THROUGHOUT THIS WORK

Proposition 1: The Decorative Arts arise from, and should properly be attendant upon, Architecture.

Proposition 2: Architecture is the material expression of the wants, the faculties, and the sentiments, of the age in which it is created.

Proposition 3: As Architecture, so all works of the Decorative Arts, should possess fitness, proportion, harmony, the result of all which is repose.

Proposition 4: True beauty results from that repose which the mind feels when the eye, the intellect, and the affections, are satisfied from the absence of any want.

Proposition 5: Construction should be decorated. Decoration should never be purposely constructed. That which is beautiful is true; that which is true must be beautiful.

Proposition 6: Beauty of form is produced by lines growing out one from the other in gradual undulations; there are no excrescences; nothing could be removed and leave the design equally good or better.

Proposition 7: The general forms being first cared for, these should be subdivided and ornamented by general lines; the interstices may then be filled in with ornament, which again may be subdivided and enriched for closer inspection.

ASSYRIAN AND PERSIAN ORNAMENT

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GREEK ORNAMENT

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 8: All ornament should be based on a geometrical construction.

Proposition 9: As in every perfect work of Architecture, a true proportion will be found to reign between all the members which compose it, so throughout the Decorative Arts ever assemblage of forms should be arranged on certain definite proportions; the whole and each particular member should be a multiple of some simple unit. Those proportions will be the most beautiful which it will be most difficult for the eye to detect.

Proposition 10: Harmony of form consists in the proper balanceing, and contrast of, the straight, the inclined, and the curved.

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 11: In surface decoration all lines should flow out of a perfect stem. Every ornament, however distant, should be traced to its branch and root. (Oriental practice)

Proposition 12: All junctions of curved lines with curved or of curved lines with straight should be tangential to each other. (Natural law)

Proposition 13: Flowers or other natural objects should not be used as ornaments, but conventional representations founded upon them sufficiently suggestive to convey the intended image to the mind, without destroying the unity of the object they are employed to decorate. (Universally obeyed in the best periods of Art, equally violated when Art declines.)

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 14: Colour is used to assist in the development of form, and to distinguish objects or parts of objects one from another.

Proposition 15: Colour is used to assist light and shade, helping the undulations of form by the proper distribution of the several colours.

Proposition 16: Those objects are best attained by the use of the primary colours on small surfaces and in small quantities, balanced and supported by the secondary and tertiary colours on the larger masses.

Proposition 17: The primary colours should be used on the upper portions of objects, the secondary and tertiary on the lower.

POMPEIAN ORNAMENT

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GENERAL PRINCIPLES (cont)

Proposition 18: The primaries of equal intensities will harmonise or neutralise each other, in the proportions of 3 yellow, 5 red, and 8 blue- integrally as 16. The secondaries in the proportions of 8 orange, 13 purple, 11 green- integrally as 32. The tertiaries, citrine (compound of orange and green) 19, russet (orange and purple) 21, olive (green and purple) 24- integrally as 64.

Proposition 19: When a full colour is contrasted with another of a lower tone, the volume of the latter must be proportionally incerased.

Proposition 20: When a primary tinged with another primary is contrasted with a secondary, the secondary must have a hue of the third primary.

BYZANTINE

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ARABIAN

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TURKISH

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MORESQUE ORNAMENT

Steve’s Comments: The designs in this section all come from the Alhambra in Spain. The Moors believed in decorating construction, not constructing decoration, so even though the graphic designs in this section are elaborate and awe inspiring, they always serve the overall form of the structure. Their religion forbade literal depictions, so the focus is on geometric patterns, along with written inscriptions reminding the viewer that regardless of the great accomplishments of its builders, "there is no greater creator than God."

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PERSIAN ORNAMENT

Grammar of Ornament

Steve’s Comments: Persian ornament is a mixed style, with elements of both Arabian and Turkish design. Unlike the Moors, the Persians were free to depict human, animal and floral subjects, and their illuminated manuscripts were well known throughout the Mohammedan world. In Persian rugs, you can see floral ornamentation that was particularly influential to the development of art in India.

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INDIAN ORNAMENT

Grammar of Ornament

Steve’s Comments: Indian art is simultaneously elaborate and completely balanced. In both architecture and textiles, there is a remarkable ability to create a heirarchy of detail that holds together from a distance, yet reveals new details as you look closer and closer at the design. Even though the colors are vivid and varied, there’s always an overall harmony. The depiction of plant life is elegantly stylized and well observed. Some of the flowers look like you could pick them right off the page.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF DESIGN

When The Grammar of Ornament was originally published in the mid-19th century, Victorian designers pilfered it shamelessly for fabric and wallpaper patterns. Jones was horrified to learn that designs that had served specific purposes to the ancient artists who created them were being mixed and matched randomly across cultures and centuries for purely decorative reasons.

This book is a lot more than just pretty "wallpaper samples"- it’s an historical encyclopedia of pattern, shape and color. The history of mankind is revealed in its attempts at graphically depicting perfection. While there are marked differences between cultures, there’s also a certain unity of aesthetic. Whether this is a result of "nature or nuture", I’m not sure. No culture ever existed in a vacuum. But I lean towards thinking that there are certain patterns and shapes that appeal to us on some sort of primal level.

Nowhere is this more evident in recent times than in folk and ethnic art…

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Grammar of Ornament
Grammar of Ornament

If there’s a "magic" to creativity… an element that is just there, defying all attempts to analyze or quantify it… The Grammar of Ornament contains it. (And the book does a pretty good job of analyzing and quantifying!) There are certain combinations of pleasing colors, shapes and sounds that are common to us all. I think of these patterns and designs as being the visual equivalent of music. It doesn’t matter what language you speak or what culture you come from, music speaks on a basic level that all humans comprehend from birth.

MUSICAL DIGRESSION

Last week, I got a DVD that illustrated the commonality of different musical cultures very clearly… Pete Seeger’s PBS music program, Rainbow Quest. In this series, Seeger attempted to show the link between all types of folk music- blues, bluegrass, old time country, sea chanteys, Irish folk songs, etc… In this clip, Seeger brings together Roscoe Holcombe (the Kentucky mountain musician for whom the term "high lonesome sound" was coined) and Scottish folk singer Jean Redpath. Even though Holcombe and Redpath come from opposite universes, check out how Seeger gently leads the musicmaking towards the core elements that they share in common…

Pete Seeger's Rainbow Quest

Pete Seeger’s "Rainbow Quest"

with Roscoe Holcombe & Jean Redpath (PBS/ca.1965)
(Quicktime 7 / 18.6 megs)

I’ve always found that the more you know about different creative subjects, the more you understand each individual one. This is the secret to the magic and power of creativity. I realize that this is a pretty vague and nebulous point to try and make, but I hope the examples I give you here express it better than my feeble words.

Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

TheoryTheory

This posting is part of a series of articles comprising an online exhibit entitled Theory.

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Posted by admin @ 1:57 pm

October 4th, 2023

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Magazine Cartoons: Virgil Partch’s Wild, Wild Women

Virgil VIP Partch

Virgil “Vip” Partch is one of the greatest cartoonists who ever lived, but the simplicity and directness of his style belie its sophistication. Born in 1916, Partch studied under Rico LeBrun at Choiuinard Art Institute, before joining the Disney studios as a story man. His influence can be seen clearly in the Donald Duck cartoon “Duck Pimples”. Partch worked at Disney for four years, until his stay there was cut short by the strike in 1941.

Virgil VIP Partch

Out of work, Partch submitted some one panel cartoons to Colliers, and they were published. This began a fruitful career as a magazine cartoonist. Throughout the 50s, he published small collections of his cartoons, grouped by themes. “Bottle Fatigue” dealt with the spell of alcohol, “Here We Go Again” was a collection of cartoons dealing with Army life, and “Wild, Wild Women” and “Man The Beast” dealt with the battle between the sexes. Partch’s cartoons are absurd, visually delightful and wicked. Most of all, they are unique.

Virgil VIP Partch

As I said before, Vip’s style is so streamlined and simple, it’s easy to overlook the depth of thought beneath the surface of his cartoons. His compositions always read beautifully with clear silhouettes, appealing shapes and interesting negative spaces. The lines define a solid form and simple visual clues indicate rock-solid perspective… His drawings never seem flat, no matter how stylized they are. There’s a wide variety of ways of depicting different facial expressions and expressive personality that is obviously observed from life. It doesn’t get better than this!

Virgil VIP Partch

Partch’s greatest book was "Wild, Wild Women". Check out these beautiful drawings.

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Stephen Worth
Director
Animation Resources

Magazine CartoonsMagazine Cartoons

This posting is part of the online Encyclopedia of Cartooning under the subject heading, Magazine Cartoons.

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Posted by admin @ 10:35 am

October 3rd, 2023

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Art Education: The Dreyfus Model

Hello everyone I’m Taber, Vice President of Animation Resources. I’m going to be making a series of posts focused on the more academic side of artistic instruction and learning in general. This sort of information can be helpful to both teachers and students as you push yourself to improve and practice your discipline.

Preston Blair instruction

As a beginning artist it can often be difficult to objectively judge your own progress or the quality of your own work. Being able to place yourself in an accurate position of skillfulness can help you to recognize your past growth and current deficienciesย so you can better target areas for improvement. But what if you can’t tell exactly what the differences are between your work and the work of more highly skilled artists?

The Dreyfus model focuses on work practices and approaches as a measure of skill acquisition. This can be helpful to both students and instructors as it tends to be entirely non-judgmental and easy to identify objectively. The model uses four qualities to determine work habits:

  • Recollection (non-situational or situational)
  • Recognition (decomposed or holistic)
  • Decision (analytical or intuitive)
  • Awareness (monitoring or absorbed)

These attributes stack one at a time to provide a framework for evaluation:

dreyfus_chart

(click image to enlarge)

For an accurate measurement, ask yourself these questions regarding the above attributes. Because some of these attributes can flip between a more advanced and a less advanced state, I recommend relying on the lower state. For an example if you were trying to decide if you are an intuitive decision maker, or a rational decision maker but you do both part of the time, put yourself down as rational as a rule of thumb.

  1. When you recall knowledge about the subject, is itย alwaysย in a related context with other information, or is it sometimes rote memorization?
  2. While thinking about an aspect of the subject, can you clearlyย distinguish between relevant and irrelevant aspects of the work, or is it sometimes difficult to tell what’s important?
  3. When planning your own work, do you need to carefully and analytically lay out the steps beforehand or can you see the entire project as a whole task?
  4. When making decisions in your work, do you have to do any problem solving, or do the answers come to you intuitively, without effort most of the time?

Once you’ve answered these four questions, find the lowest tier which corresponds to your answers, even if you choose an attribute from a higher tier. Read the Needs column from the above chart and try to focus your learning on the types of practice listed in that section. Don’t cheat yourself by practicing projects which are too complex or unstructured! That sort of practice is really only for very highly skillful artists.

This system is similar to the surface to core concept illustrated by Scott McCloud in his book Understanding Comics which I highly recommend! In the book, McCloud describes how a person who is initially drawn to be a fan of an art-form must undertake a journey to the core of that medium before being able to master and thus give back to that medium.mccloud_understanding_comics

Additionally, this same artist’s journey from surface to core is echoed in much of the advice and instructional material given to artists throughout time, from Zim to Richard Williams.ย In essence, this is what an “old masters” approach is. This struggle is ultimately the best way to gain skill in an artistic medium, however it is difficult and it does take time.

โ€œNobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, itโ€™s just not that good. Itโ€™s trying to be good, it has potential, but itโ€™s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesnโ€™t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone Iโ€™ve ever met. Itโ€™s gonna take awhile. Itโ€™s normal to take awhile. Youโ€™ve just gotta fight your way through.โ€ -Ira Glass

I have some personal theories about the types of artistic practice activities which benefit artists the most when trying to improve aspects of their work, and I’ll be talking about that next time!


Right now, it’s Back To School time at Animation Resources, and for the next two weeks we will be sharing reasons why students and educators should be a member of our important project. There is no better way to feed your creativity than to be a member of Animation Resources. Every other month, we share a Reference Pack that is chock full of downloadable e-books and still framable videos designed to expand your horizons and blow your mind. It’s easy to join. Just click on this link and you can sign up right now online…


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Posted by Taber Dunipace @ 11:45 am